Ned Ryun, founder and CEO of American Majority Action, said Republicans are losing elections not because of bad candidates or weak messaging but because they are being outworked year-round by a left that treats politics as a religion and warned that Virginia Republicans face a steep structural deficit heading into 2025 that only a permanent campaign model can overcome.
“We’re up against a bunch of religious zealots,” Ryun said on the Restoration Spotlight Podcast by Restoration News. “The progressive left, politics is their religion. The administrative state is their holy of holies. They’re organizing 24/7, 365 days a year for political power.”
Ryun said Florida’s transformation from battleground state to reliably Republican should serve as a model for every competitive state in the country.
“Florida is no longer a battleground state,” he said. “Now there’s 1.3 million more registered Republicans than Democrats in the state. Seismic shift from even 2020, in which there were almost 100,000 more registered Democrats in Florida.”
Florida Republicans now hold a 10-point voter registration lead over Democrats statewide, a 1.35 million voter advantage that is the largest either party has held in Florida history, according to the Florida Phoenix.
Ryun said the old model of last-minute get-out-the-vote efforts has been completely overtaken by a new reality that rewards year-round investment in voter infrastructure.
“It used to be the 72-hour task force where you’d go in those last 72 hours before the elections and push out as many people as possible on election day,” he said. “Well, the rules have changed considerably.”
Ryun said one of the most important strategic shifts in modern elections is that high turnout now works in Republicans’ favor rather than against them.
“It used to be that low turnout elections favored Republicans,” he said. “I don’t think that’s the case anymore. High turnout elections actually favor Republicans. We’ve got to boost the numbers.”
Democrats lost ground to Republicans in all 30 states that maintain voter registration records between 2020 and 2024, with one major Democratic donor saying bluntly that the party’s leadership and message have both failed, according to The Hill.
Ryun said Virginia Republicans face a significant structural disadvantage heading into the 2025 elections that goes far beyond messaging or candidate quality.
“Modeled Republicans were down about 250,000 to the modeled Democrats,” he said. “If you look at the ballot universe, I think we’re down 339,000 on the permanent absentee ballot list here in Virginia.”
Across the 30 states that track voter registration by party, Democrats lost 2.1 million registered voters between 2020 and 2024 while Republicans gained 2.4 million, a net swing of 4.5 million voters, according to a New York Times and L2 data analysis.
Ryun said the economics of early voting make a compelling case for Republicans to bank their votes as early as possible rather than waiting until election day.
“If you vote in that first couple of days when the ballots drop, you’re probably going to cost us about $10 a ballot,” he said. “If you wait until election day, you’re going to cost us about $100 for your ballot. Ten times more.”
Ryun is the founder and CEO of American Majority, a political training institute that has trained over 86,000 candidates and activists in all 50 states since 2008, and serves as an unofficial advisor to President Trump and a member of the 1776 Commission. A former writer for President George W. Bush and son of Olympic medalist and former U.S. Rep. Jim Ryun, he resides in Purcellville, Virginia.
Restoration News is an investigative outlet affiliated with Restoration of America, covering cultural issues, political funding, and border policy for conservative readers, with an emphasis on stories it says receive limited mainstream media coverage.